FASHION : The New Models : Unconventional Looks Are in Vogue on the Runway and in Photo Layouts
Picture a fashion layout with these models: Sebastian is tall, black, and looks androgynous. Yvette is a Latina with a distinctive nose. Evan, has a crew cut, and tattoos cover half his body.
These are three of the many unconventional faces that have come out of California model agencies in the last several years. Such young talents are in high demand and can earn up to $100,000 per year for looking different than the standard fashion model.
Obviously, the modeling industry is in the midst of a transformation. Beauty is still the heart of the business. But today, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the good, the bad, and the unconventional can walk designer runways and grace the pages of magazines such as Vogue, Elle and Mademoiselle.
The trend has been intensifying since 1985, when pudgy, bespectacled--even balding--models turned up in shows of top-notch European designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier in Paris and Franco Moschino in Milan. About the same time, magazines such as Details and L.A. Style started opting for more extreme fashion pictorials, with models who looked more like real people. Then came a spate of fashion ad campaigns from Benetton, Esprit and The Gap, using people who looked more like character actors than fashion models.
Many maintain the trend was created by Paris-based Japanese designer Issey Miyake. “Miyake really started it 10 years ago when he showed his collection in Japan using older Japanese people who weren’t necessarily models, “ recalls Larry Chrysler, a California retailer and manufacturer for 34 years and an independent fashion consultant for the last four. “Now it’s fairly common for designers to choose models they feel consumers can identify with. They are no longer confined to using billboard-type faces.”
Fashion photographers have encouraged the trend, as they exercise growing control over the models they use and the pictures they take. Often, they prefer to use non-models.
Photographer Bruce Weber, for example, has used youthful Santa Monica surfers and American Indians for a number of Calvin Klein ads; Herb Ritts discovered Tony Ward (featured in Madonna’s new, banned-from-MTV “Justify My Love” video) while doing a series of pseudo-erotic underwear photos for L.A. Style magazine; and Philip Dixon showed exotic-looking models with exaggerated features for Body Glove and other local clothing company ads. Weber is based in New York; Ritts and Dixon live in Los Angeles. But, “It was the European photographers who came to California that started it all,” says model-turned-photographer Carlos Reynosa of Los Angeles, who shoots for Mademoiselle, Interview and Rolling Stone, among other magazines. “They discovered the ethnic diversity of Los Angeles and took advantage of it.”
Reynosa says interest in ethnic models was limited 10 years ago when he spent his days in front of the camera, not behind it. “Now the industry is much more open,” he says. When I started taking pictures in 1984, I received immediate acceptance using ethnic models.”
Not surprisingly, model agencies are eager to fill the demand for non-conventional faces. Many Los Angeles agencies schedule “open calls” every other week when 200 to 300 wanna-bes show up, vying for the chance to make from $50 an hour (for editorial work) to $5,000 a day (for some advertising campaigns).
The agencies cast models for everything from newspaper, magazine and billboard ads to television commercials. They promote models with large noses, exaggerated sideburns, tattoos, even crooked teeth, and are discovering that it pays to specialize in the eccentric.
Omar’s Men, It Models, Hero, Prima East West, L.A. Models and Elite’s New Faces division are just a few of the agencies helping to, quite literally, change the face of modeling by specializing in clients from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Omar Albertto owns Omar’s Men, which specializes in male models with strong, ethnic looks and plenty of attitude; a handful are former gang members. He looks for the man with a compelling face. “I don’t mean Ken doll looks,” he says. “He can have a big nose or exaggerated big lips. Or maybe his teeth aren’t lined up, but he has a great smile. Fashion is coming from the streets today. So why not use people from the streets to model them?”
Indeed, Albertto has been so successful with his approach that he recently opened a sister agency, It Models. Using a similar philosophy for women, co-owner Paul Fisher says, has proven successful. Last year, the agencies had a combined yearly income of about $15 million, the owners say.
Despite the move away from strictly Anglo models, most department stores adhere to a “3-to-1 ratio” (three Anglos to every ethnic model) for their ads. But some store executives say they are using more ethnic models for in-store fashion shows, in part to keep up with trends.
“With the shifting monetary distribution to minority groups in America, the smart companies are starting to target these groups,” says Ray Wills, a vice president of Macy’s California. One way to do so, he adds, is to hire a greater number of ethnic models.
Store fashion shows rely more heavily on an ethnic mix of models because there are increasingly more people of color in the audience. “People watching a fashion show don’t have to guess if something would look good on them,” Willis says.
Ad directors for better specialty stores, fashion magazine art directors, even the designers themselves are clearly opting for greater variety.
“It’s not necessary that we use ‘GQ’-type models,” says L.A. designer Richard Tyler, who has been a strong advocate of hiring unusual-looking models for his shows and ads. “We usually like women with a little more exotic look, and men with goatees, beards. They can even be bald.” What is Tyler’s limit? “It’s important that the models not be too weird, or they detract from the clothes.”
Strong as the trend toward non-conventional faces may be at the moment, Bill Arndt, a modeling agent for more than 15 years and owner of a new Los Angeles-based agency, Hero, sees it as a passing fancy.
“The truth of the matter is the classic, All-American good looks are still the big moneymakers,” Arndt says. “The ethnic models certainly have a place in the business. But it’s not a long-range thing. Clients get tired of the traditional good looks and start looking for unusual models every couple of years. But they always come back.”
Arndt’s agency does accommodate clients looking for ethnic and exotic-looking models. But, he adds, those models “certainly don’t pay the rent. I keep the unusual looking models around simply to keep up with the trends.”
Super agent Nina Blanchard agrees that some old standards still apply.
A fixture in the industry since 1961, with a famous agency that bears her name, Blanchard explains: “There is certainly a much broader range of models working today. For the past six years we’ve seen a lot more interesting faces out there. But there are still some criteria for models. She has to be 5-foot-9 to 6 feet, she has to be between the ages of 15 to 20 to start, and she has to be photogenic.” Fifty percent of her models no longer fall into the classic mold.
In the modeling industry’s new exotic age, there are new taboos.
“Anything fake is not what it’s about,” says Fisher of It Models. “Lip implants, boob jobs and peroxided hair are all turnoffs. The modeling industry today is about inner beauty. We’re looking for an ethereal quality you can’t get from a plastic surgeon.”
This being Hollywood, many modeling agents contend the new exoticism has evolved in strong part from a film industry preference for leading actors with unconventional good looks.
“The leading men are guys like Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke,” Albertto notes.
He adds that biker dress (leather jackets, engineer boots), a dominant theme in fashion right now, has also encouraged the new definition of beauty. “Almost 50% of our guys have tattoos now,” Albertto says. “Some of the girls do, too.”
